Sound effects us every day on a grand scale, both knowingly and unknowingly, every day we have an emotional experienced with sound. Whether it be not noticing the fridge cycling on and off to hearing a car horn at 100 decibels in your right hear, sound impacts our lives more than we notice. As John Cage said, `There is no such thing as silence`. Even the most subliminal of sound can stir and evoke. The human ear is incredibly sensitive. Your ears can hear everything from your fingertip brushing lightly over your skin to a loud jet engine. Even in the most tranquil of settings we are surrounded by or unconsciously affected by some kind of white noise.

Sound and Music have the power to control and direct our sensory perceptions in the most subtle or the most extravagant manner and unlike most artistic mediums music doesn't have to mean anything. It has the power to just `be`, but in `being` it taps the most primitive sensory regions of the brain, triggering feelings and memories and immersing us in multiple dimensions simultaneously.

The use of sound for behavioural control and management of man and animal is still in its infancy. Loud signals from experimental sonars underwater can alter the behavioural patterns of marine animals and muzak is not only being used to stimulate sales in supermarkets now but strategically chosen audio is being used to pacifying bogans in malls to reduce vandalism.

According to Dr. Horowitz, a Harvard-trained award-winning musicologist/researcher, there is a special sound and colour of love. And this “C”, part of an ancient scale called the Solfeggio Scale with a frequency of 528 Hz is also used for DNA repair. Broadcasting the right frequency can help open your heart, promote peace, and hasten healing. “We now know the love signal, 528 Hertz, is among the six core creative frequencies of the universe because math doesn’t lie, the geometry of physical reality universally reflects this music; these findings have been independently derived, peer reviewed, and empirically validated,” Dr. Horowitz says.

The use of different scales, tones and textures can shape and complete visual works. Rhythm, constructed of beats and notes, like vertebras of the spinal column, can become the backbone of any cinematic narrative. The decibel scale, named after Alexander Graham Bell who worked in the area of sound and loudness, is used to measure and compare the loudness of sound. The intensity (how much sound energy per unit area per second hitting the eardrum) of a single note combined with a visual or animated action can increase the impact 10 fold. `VOLUME` remains one of the most misunderstood, abused and over used components of sound technology today.

An action combined with a sound can make us jump, wince, cringe, giggle. The relationship between sound and image is a very powerful and often under-utilised one. Whether it is harmony or in discord, sound can change our way of seeing.

MEANS

Explore the use of sound to impact an image. It can be a stationary or a moving image; you may use a recorded conversation, a sound effect, a drum beat or a song, but combine it with imagery to experience how the sound can change or enhance the viewers relationship with the image.